Data Transmition Much Higher Than Expected - Motorola Q Forum

colincor · 03-04-2008, 05:14 PM

I have a Motorola Q with Bell Mobility and every single month I have to phone them to have them deduct between $60-$80 from my bill for going over my data allowance of 8MB.

I do not surf the web and I do not open email attachments, I only send and receive email. When I look at the amount of data from all incoming email for the month on my computer (which is using the same account), I see a total of 3.5MB. Now I have the Q setup to only retrieve the first 5K of a message, and I don't open any attachments, and while I may send 5-10 email a month from my Q, without attachments this couldn't equal more than an additional 10-40kb... So if we round that up to 500kb (!) and add that to the 3.5mb incoming, I am still only at 4mb...HALF my allowance.

Now I was told by a Bell tech support agent (not saying much) that each time the Q looks up the server, even if there is no data to transmit, there will still be 1kb of transmition per session. So set at 15min (mine is actually set at every 30min) there would be 4 requests every hour which equals 96 requests per day (let's just say 100), which equals 3000 requests per month. 3000 requests times 1kb per request = an additional 3mb of data. This would bring my total usage at 7MB and still 1MB clear of my allowance. However Bell is saying my data usage is 19MB!

The only thing I see runing is pMSNServer.exe. Can this be the cause? Where can this data be coming from? When I got my plan I figured I'd never go above the 8MB when all I do is email. I mean, when you consider that the typical email is 1-3kb, 8MB of email with no attachments is a whole $#!T load of mail. WTF???

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I didn't care if I didn't have unlimited data since I was only going to use the Q for email, but now I'm praying for a cheap unlimited data plan so that I won't have to keep having these monthly phone dates with Bell.

magicman08 · 03-04-2008, 05:29 PM

I donno turn off your data until you want to check your e-mail and turn it off....i have no clue sorry.......but its a simple pita solution

colincor · 03-04-2008, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by magicman08

I donno turn off your data until you want to check your e-mail and turn it off....i have no clue sorry.......but its a simple pita solution

Isn't the Q a 'Smartphone?' There has to be a better solution than this.

Der Alta · 03-04-2008, 06:09 PM

Are you also using it for SMS and Text messages?

On some companies, these are considered Data. do you email others from your phone? or Send pictures from your phone?

PacoJr67 · 03-04-2008, 06:25 PM

I know you don't open the attachments, but does the phone download them?

colincor · 03-04-2008, 07:03 PM

Bell doesn't count SMS as data and I do not send photos or anything like that. I only send and receive email as data. And I have the phone set to 5K, so it can't download the attachment unless I request it.

I have spoken with Bell and their data transmition records for when I send and receive email are accurate, it is their total that is miles off. There are little bits of data that must reoccure that add up over the month.

And FYI, any cell phone company that charges SMS as data would be foolish. SMS is more profitable as standard SMS. Also, I don't think there is a way to track SMS as data to charge that way because SMS uses signaling channel as opposed to dedicated channels and therefore doesn't transmit as data.

GldnBear · 03-04-2008, 07:07 PM

I believe you can track your data usage. You can try turning off your e-mail checking and check the usage to see if some other program is using your data. You should be able to correlate the amount e-mail downloaded versus total usage to get a feel for the overhead. Data also has error checking, so if data doesn't agree, it will have to resend parts of the download. There is also some header information sent with each piece of data.

I have an unlimited plan, so I do not know how the carriers define what is data usage. If it includes overhead and error checking, you may be using a lot more than you think.

colincor · 03-04-2008, 08:11 PM

So the Guru and the Evangelist weren't up to it, but thanks to GldnBear I have a great test I can perform.

I already had Bell Tier 2 tech support perform a test where they emailed me a message with a 1MB attachment to see how the data transmit appeared on their end. The end result was one 1.5MB data transmit which equaled the message plus the attachment plus a few kilobites. This was when I had the phone set to download the entire message (though this still shouldn't have included the attachment and Motorola's manual agrees), now I have it set to only download the first 5K, but it did show that the Q was also downloading the attachment (one of my arguments at the time before switching to the 5K workaround), the message, and 3-4KB extra.

The problem I have been having is I have no way to figure out where this extra data is coming from, but GldnBear has suggested an excellent test.

Thanks - I'll post my results. I've also made two changes to my email account on the phone, now I have the account set to IMAP, and to only download the last 7 days of messages and the headers only (every 30 min).

If anyone's interested, I have another issue now (see forum topic: deleted messages do not delete from IMAP, or something like that). Now messages I delete from the Q are not being deleted from my IMAP server and the message is re-downloaded, but now marked as read instead of just being deleted or being moved to a deleted folder (trash bin)

Quote:

Originally Posted by GldnBear

I believe you can track your data usage. You can try turning off your e-mail checking and check the usage to see if some other program is using your data. You should be able to correlate the amount e-mail downloaded versus total usage to get a feel for the overhead. Data also has error checking, so if data doesn't agree, it will have to resend parts of the download. There is also some header information sent with each piece of data.

I have an unlimited plan, so I do not know how the carriers define what is data usage. If it includes overhead and error checking, you may be using a lot more than you think.

colincor · 03-04-2008, 08:20 PM

Oops, the other topic is does not delete imap mail, originally started by ziggie216

larsdennert · 03-04-2008, 08:24 PM

To set your Q to poll for email automatically and have a limited data plan is the most foolish choice I can imagine. It will chew through data like no end. 19MB is nothing. Server retries and bad signal is vey common. You pay for the data you tried to get. You pay for tcpip packet overhead. You need to set it on manual mode. I've had everything from minutes-only data to unlimited plans. When I had a 10mb plan I had to be very careful.